Doegred
by Mythopoeia
Summary: A collection of brief conversations between cousins. Some injuries heal more easily than others.
1. Chapter 1

_AN: Not so much a chapter story as a series of very short stories exploring a singular theme-namely, how Fingon and Maedhros process their various traumas in the aftermath of Thangorodrim. A note on the title: I have always loved that Maedhros' Old English name means "Daybreak". As Fingon and Maedhros both underwent terrible experiences and have to struggle towards recovery together, this gave me an excuse to give it a cameo in the title for this collection. (PS: I can't believe I'm finally writing _Silmarillion _fic after nearly fifteen years of loving these characters and their stories) (PPS: I already depicted this scene once before by drawing it on my tumblr, but that wasn't enough for me so here it is written out.)_

I.

"Findekáno?"

It is the first time Russandol has called him by name since—since the cliff. Findekáno, caught just as he began to rise from his seat, looks with startled eyes down to the bed where his cousin had, until now, been sleeping.

_Sleeping_ is perhaps too kind a word for it. But Findekáno does not have words, yet, for most anything to do with his cousin these last weeks.

"Yes, Russandol," he says, as gently as he can. "I am here."

"How came you here?"

"We flew," Findekano says. He remembers the experience as being very cold, and he remembers it had been hard to breathe, so swift was the rush of Thorondor's speed through the high airs. He had curled down as low as he dared over Russandol's body, shaking, clinging with frozen fingers to the eagle's long, slippery feathers as he braced with stiff arms to keep his cousin from falling. The god-eagle's feathers had shone like gold between his bloodied fingers, great shining handfuls of gold. They had smelled like home. He had cried.

Irissë has not spoken to him since he returned except to say that she is envious that he got to fly.

"No," Russandol rasps. "How came you. To Aman. How did—"

"Oh."

The cold, the awful cold rises up between Findekáno's teeth like it never left him, that hateful, familiar rigidity creeping into his throat, his shoulders, freezing and heavy upon his tongue. For a moment he is tempted to lie, or to deflect the question, but Nelyafinwë is. after all, Feanáro's son. He deserves to know.

"We walked the Ice. All of us, except Arafinwë. We walked for years."

Maitimo's eyes used to be only one of his many beauties. Now, they are the only loveliness he has left. Findekáno meets their grey gaze and wonders, not for the first time, why Morgoth did not cut them out. He does not even feel sick, thinking of it. He has been through too much for that.

"I am sorry."

Findekáno does not even laugh at the apology. He just sits there, his hand on the edge of the bed, staring at his cousin. Maitimo's voice is wrecked. His lips are torn to pieces. There is a scar, across the broken bridge of his nose, that looks almost like a second mouth, a twisted, bitter smile that never goes away.

"Findekáno."

It takes him a long while to stammer out each syllable, but still he says the full name.

"I am. I am sorry."

(Itarildë had cried their entire first hour on the Ice, but when her tears froze and they had to thrust her face close to a torch to thaw them, tearing out half her eyelashes in the frantic race to save her eyes, she learned never to cry again. Findekáno himself would have lost his fingers to frostbite if Artanis had not realized what was happening in time to save them. The first time he cut off a man's hand was not on the cruel slopes of Thangorodrim—it was on the Ice, sawing through dead black flesh and crystalized blood and trying desperately not to be sick. The man died anyway.)

(So many died anyway.)

Russandol whispers: "It must have been terrible."

Turukáno would have screamed at him. Artanis would have hit him. Findekáno swallows it down, that endless, endless cold, looking at his cousin's ruined face. At his own hand resting on the bedspread where Maitimo's right hand should have been.

"It was," he says at last. "But it is over, now."


	2. Chapter 2

II.

The first time Russandol tries to thank him for his rescue, it is like a pit opens up in Findekáno's stomach. He shakes his head, the fingers of his bow hand trembling slightly. They do that, now and then, ever since Thangorodrim. He flexes his empty fingers stubbornly, willing them steady.

"It was not me who saved you. It was Manwë."

"Manwë was not there to cut me free from the mountain," Russandol says lightly, but there is no humor in his eyes. Findekáno shakes his head again, and kneels down upon the grass beside his cousin. Russandol is breathing harder than a ten-minute walk on level ground should merit, but it is still improvement from a week ago.

"Maybe not, but it was his eagle who came. I would have killed you, else. I prayed that I could kill you swiftly, and I would have killed you, but then the eagle came."

"Ah, you see? You prayed, and the eagle came. Never in all my time there did any eagle come for me. It came for you."

"Did you ask for the Valar's help?"

"No." A shadow comes over his face. "I . . . I was too ashamed. To ask. The only thing I ever prayed to in those years was Morgoth. And he did not hear me, either. Or, well, that is not true. I prayed to you, when I asked you to kill me."

"Blasphemy, cousin," Findekáno chides mildly, but he is not really angry. Russandol does not look at him. He is staring down at his knees like a child confessing to its parent.

"I thought it the Doom come for me in my turn. I have killed my kin. We set foot on this land and that first night my father said we would burn the ships. I stood aside and did nothing. I thought that meant my hands were clean. Macalaurë, Atarinkë, all of them helped but I did not. I saw, looking down at the burning, that Ambarto was missing. I thought it meant he stood aside as I did. But after the ships were well and truly ablaze we realized he was not anywhere. He burned to death on the ships.

"Then my father died, so soon after, and we were left not even his body to bury. And when I went to the parley and saw the flaming swords I thought: here is my turn. And they took me and-they-I thought it was my punishment. My father died, and my littlest brother died, and we were all being eaten up by the curse one by one. I thought it was the Valar's _will_, that I be tormented by Morgoth, just as it must have been their will that my littlest brother perish in fire on the ships. I was too frightened to ask for forgiveness. I told myself, at first, that I deserved it. All of it. That the Valar were punishing me and that their punishment was just."

His mouth twisted horribly.

"But I didn't deserve it, did I, Findekáno?"

Findekáno does not even think; he reaches out and sets his hand on his cousin's bowed shoulder. He means it to be comforting, and remembers too late how Russandol now hates to be touched without warning.

Russandol does not flinch away, but his breath catches in his throat and Findekáno snatches his fingers back as though burned.

"No," he says, and he wants to shake his cousin, to force him to look in his eyes and read the ferocity of his conviction there, but he doesn't. It takes everything he has in him, but he doesn't.

"Russandol, listen to me. I do not know anything but a small part of what you endured, but even so, I know-I _know_ you did not deserve that. No creature of Eru's make deserved that."

After a long moment, Findekáno begins to fear his cousin did not hear him—that his touch had locked him back in some dark memory like he had so often struggled with, in the early days of his recovery, and that he can no longer hear or see anything outside of his own mind. But then he takes a ragged gasp of air and his left hand rises up to rub shakily at his eyes.

"Help me up," he says. "I want to walk to the stream."

"You are certain you can? It's almost twice as long again as how far we've already come."

Russandol nods and bites at his lip.

"Help me," he says.

So Findekáno helps him.


	3. Chapter 3

III.

Russandol never screams.

In a horridly selfish way Findekáno cannot help but wish sometimes that he would, for it would be easier then to know when his cousin is dreaming. Instead, Findekáno finds himself lying restless at nights, dragging himself out of bed every few hours or more to sneak down the hall to Russandol's room and to listen at the door for anything amiss, anything at all. Tonight, he can hear his cousin's tortured breathing before he is even at the door—each stuttered gasp is high, whining, the sound a dog makes when it is kicked. He flings open the door and rushes to the bedside.

"Russandol," he calls as loudly as he dares, his hands half-raised helplessly. He does not touch his cousin. "Russandol!"

When Russandol does not respond, he clenches his hands and takes a deep breath.

"_Nelyafinwë_," he calls, and Russandol sits up so fast Findekáno nearly startles back, his eyes wide. Russandol is sweating, staring straight ahead at the dark wall, but when Findekáno moves he flinches away from the movement, his face twisted in terror and pain. Findekáno freezes, and tries not to feel anything at his cousin's response, just as he had tried not to feel anything when his gamble at waking Russandol worked. Only one person ever called his cousin _Nelyafinwë_ after Russandol came of age, and he had always been the one man Russandol had never been able to refuse.

"Findekáno," Russandol breathes. He speaks as though he is afraid he is still dreaming. Findekáno tries to smile.

"I heard you dreaming, and thought you would like to wake," he says, as lightly as he can. "I can leave now, if you wish it."

"—No." Russandol bites his lip and buckles forward a little, because who knows what damage he has aggravated by his sudden lunge upright and he is still always hurting these days even when he is lying still—but then he holds out his maimed arm and Findekáno sits down on the edge of the bed obligingly, staying very still as his cousin leans against him.

He thinks Russandol will just stay quiet as he has on previous nights before either falling asleep or sending Findekáno away. Instead, he starts talking.

"I see them," he whispers brokenly, his breath hot and shaking on Findekáno's shoulder. "Over and over. I dreamed it even before you came—I see them take Makalaurë, or Atarinkë, or Carnistir, or-he takes them, and he is going to do to them what he did to me, there is the fire and the, the sharp—the _things_, the-"

"It was a night terror," Findekáno says as evenly as he can, aching to stroke his cousin's hair out of his eyes but holding absolutely still instead. Russandol hates being touched, and especially hates being touched about the eyes, since he returned from Utumno.

"It is not real, Russandol. You can cry if you want to, I don't mind it, but your brothers are all safe."

Too late he remembers the rumor about Ambarussa and his face grows hot with shame. Russandol does not visibly react to the blunder, though. Findekáno cannot help fatalistically assuming it is because Ambarussa is, in the end, also safe from what his cousin fears most. Morgoth will never ruin Feanor's youngest son as he has ruined his eldest.

_No_, Findekáno chides himself sharply, gritting his teeth. Not ruined. Not quite that.

Russandol is quiet a long while. Findekáno, unable to tilt his head to see his cousin's face, begins to hope that Russandol has fallen back into his much-needed sleep, and is on the misty edge of sleep himself, when Russandol speaks again.

"I will never let him touch them," he says, very quietly. His voice has changed, since he came back from the dark, but there are echoes there for the first time of the fierce rolling lilt that had been in his words as he swore that accursed Oath. For a confused moment Findekáno is back there in the dark, staring up in fascinated horror at ruddy, gold-set jewel the torchlight has made of his cousin's face-at all seven of them, Feanor's beautiful sons, arrayed before the people like gems strung on a chain.

There is only he and Russandol, now, and there are no torches in the dark. But Findekáno knows enough of Oath-taking to recognize another when he hears it.

"Of course you will not," he tries, warily, but Russandol speaks again as if he did not hear.

"I will kill them myself, if he tries to take them."

They sit in silence a moment, in the dark. But then Findekáno realizes he is not shocked, or surprised, or pitying-he is angry, so angry he can barely breathe. He is not even sure who he is angry at.

"So that is what you have been thinking on, all these days," he says, his voice shaking slightly. "You have not even seen your brothers yet, since you came back, and all you can think about is steeling yourself to kill them if you ever fear for them too much."

"I want them _safe_," says Russandol, still in that awful voice.

Findekáno draws a deep, shivering breath, and then shakes his head. Russandol startles like a wild hare at the movement and pulls away, staring.

"If you truly want them safe," says Findekáno, standing up from the bed, "then maybe you should focus instead upon killing Morgoth."

Russandol's eyes are almost white in the darkness, huge in his starved face.

"Do you want me to stay, Russandol?"

At first, his cousin does not move, but then he shakes his head, ever so slightly, and looks down. Findekáno knows without seeing that he is looking at his right wrist.

Stiffly, Findekáno stands up from the bed, but Russandol does not lie back down. He only sits there, his thin shoulders bowed, silent. Findekáno walks to the door without bidding his cousin good night. But as he steps through the doorway he pauses, looks back. Russandol has not moved.

"By the way," Findekáno says, running his thumb back and forth across the door-handle, "everyone calls your brother Curufinwë, now. I suggest you learn to do the same. He will be very cross if people go back to calling him Atarinkë."


End file.
